ACL compiles a daily media monitoring service of stories of interest to the Christian constituency relating to children, family, drugs and alcohol, marriage, human rights, religious freedom etc. Visit the ACL’s website each day to see what’s of interest in the news. Please note that selection of the articles does not represent ACL endorsement of the content.

STAY-at-home parents will be forced to look for work soon after their youngest child goes to school as part of a new crackdown on welfare.

And tens of thousands of families, pensioners, single parents and carers will have their welfare payments slashed if they travel overseas for more than six weeks as the Government tightens the screws on benefits.

About 100,000 people who don't work will be kicked off parenting payments and forced to actively look for a job as early as when their child turns six.

A man who went to a country hospital with stomach pains last weekend is now dead.

He chose not to pay hundreds of dollars for a non-emergency bed at Keith Hospital in the upper south-east of South Australia and planned to drive on more than half an hour to Bordertown Hospital, where free public system treatment would be available.

But the man then collapsed in the Keith Hospital car park, was reassessed as an emergency case and then flown to Adelaide's Flinders Medical Centre, where he died.

Each night in Australia 105,000 people are homeless, including 7,500 families. Each June leading Australian CEOs and business leaders sleep rough for one night in support of the Vinnies CEO Sleepout.

Contrary to common perceptions about homelessness, 44 per cent of homeless people are women, many of these accompanied by children. It is a shocking fact that more than 12,000 Australian children under the age of 12 are experiencing some form of homelessness. A further 22,000 young people aged 12 to 18 are homeless, most of them estranged from their families. That’s more than 34,000 kids without a place they can call home.

But gay community station JOY 94.9's David McCarthy in simulcast with 3AW's conservative Neil Mitchell made a very odd couple indeed.

The observation was made by lord mayor Robert Doyle during the landmark but rain-soaked broadcast from the City Square yesterday. ''We talk about marriage equality, what about 3AW and Joy? How funny is that?'' he said.

A program guest, former premier and now beyondblue chairman Jeff Kennett - who has come under criticism in the past for his views on homosexuality - added further novelty by emphatically supporting same-sex marriage.

While some in the media insist on pandering to Australians’ vast #firstworldproblems conviction that the cost of living is relentlessly rising, it was good to see the new report from the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling yesterday about disposable income receiving significant coverage.

The NATSEM report showed that Australians’ incomes have significantly outstripped prices since 1984, with disposable incomes rising on average 20% ahead of inflation over the period. The report also showed that the gains were spread across all incomes groups, although the highest income groups had benefited more in the last decade compared to earlier.

Opposition immigration spokesperson Scott Morrison has claimed that hosting asylum seekers in a private home is a desperate move by the Government to facilitate supplementing a family income in difficult times.

Australia has the potential to become a regional food superpower, Prime Minister Julia Gillard says.

Ms Gillard said in an address to the Global Foundation in Melbourne that Australia could provide growing Asian economies with high-quality food, just as it had done with minerals and energy in recent times.

"In doing this, we are not just an exporter of commodities but a partner in growing international markets and a provider of higher value products and services for the global food industry," she said.

The High Court has ruled that seven former James Hardie non-executive directors breached corporate law by making a misleading statement about the company's asbestos compensation fund.

In a major victory for the corporate regulator, the High Court upheld a landmark 2009 New South Wales court decision that the former board members, including high-profile former chairwoman Meredith Hellicar, breached their duties as company directors when they approved a misleading announcement to the stock exchange in 2001.